{"id":3706,"date":"2009-06-14T22:33:00","date_gmt":"2009-06-15T03:33:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/?p=3706"},"modified":"2009-06-14T22:34:03","modified_gmt":"2009-06-15T03:34:03","slug":"last-sunday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/?p=3706","title":{"rendered":"Last Sunday"},"content":{"rendered":"

This was my last Sunday preaching at First Unitarian in New Bedford. What is one supposed to say in one’s last sermon as the settled minister of a congregation? And when one’s last Sunday is also the annual Flower Celebration<\/a>, then what is one supposed to say? Well, I don’t know what one is supposed to say, but the Flower Celebration gave me the opportunity to reiterate the four basic theological points I usually preach on: Change and transformation will lead us to growth. In light of the fragility of the ecosystem, we have a moral responsibility to create an ecologically sustainable world. In light of the unique value of each individual, we have a moral responsibility to end all forms of discrimination and racism. Each individual in a religious community is connected to every other individual; we are not alone and we cannot exist without community.<\/p>\n

The best part of the service, however, was the postlude. In honor of the Flower Celebration, Randy Fayan, our music director, played Rimsky-Korsakov’s Flight of the Bumblebee on the organ: serious music with a sense of humor.<\/p>\n

It turned out to be a pleasant last Sunday. Attendance was down to summer levels (i.e., normal for mid-June), and that meant I got to talk to more people than usual at social hour. The only odd thing about social hour was talking with the one newcomer who showed up this week (but I made sure that person met lots of regular churchgoers, so there will be someone to chat with next week). So I chatted with people, drank some tea, and soon it was time to head home. The end of the last Sunday at the New Bedford church. On to new adventures.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This was my last Sunday preaching at First Unitarian in New Bedford. What is one supposed to say in one’s last sermon as the settled minister of a congregation? And when one’s last Sunday is also the annual Flower Celebration, then what is one supposed to say? Well, I don’t know what one is supposed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberal-religion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3706"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3706\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3716,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3706\/revisions\/3716"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}